Monday, June 12, 2017

Last month, the U.N. appointed experts to lead a fact-finding mission to investigate widespread allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority who have faced discrimination in largely Buddhist Myanmar for generations. Myanmar has rejected the mission.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Suu Kyi told reporters, "We did not feel it was in keeping with the needs of the region in which we are trying to establish harmony and understanding, and to remove the fears that have kept the two communities apart for so long."

A U.N. report in February said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes in a campaign that "very likely" amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

About 75,000 Rohingya fled from Myanmar's Rakhine State to Bangladesh to escape a military crackdown last year on Rohingya militants. More than 200,000 Rohingya had already fled to Bangladesh, many living in official and makeshift camps, straining resources in one of Asia's poorest regions.